“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” describes Wyden “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

Not enough American’s are aware of how integrated their surveillance state has become, and fewer still even perceive government spying as a threat. The end result of this is that too much power concentrates into too few hands, leading to a political system that runs more like a dictatorship than a democracy.

So what does the US government do already, using different interpretations of information gathering bills like the Patriot Act?

This begs the question, if America has long been spying on its own population without legal authority, then why even bother repealing the Patriot Act?

Well, it’s about swinging the pendulum back towards the side of freedom. If Americans can at least make it unlawful for their government to invade such depths of personal privacy, they will have some recourse to hold the violators accountable.

Otherwise, the more-surveillance-is-always-better mindset will keep pushing the envelope, eroding more civil liberties until the only thing left to protect is the surveillance state itself.

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on Thursday, May 26th, 2011 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Main Blog.
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